


Escape Artist

by RatherOblivious



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Kinda, Short One Shot, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28398168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatherOblivious/pseuds/RatherOblivious
Summary: Lost in an enemy fortress Kevin will find his way out, he has too, everyone is depending on him.





	Escape Artist

**Author's Note:**

> My story in a bag from last year that I actually like pretty much as is for once.  
> They switched it up a bit so while we got a genre and opening line the other prompts were pictures on story dice so we had a gnome, a tower, what I took to be a planter but could have been an urn and cane if I remember correctly.

It was official. Harry Houdini had nothing on this cunning escape artist.

If only because he was able to, you know, unlock things instead of dislocating various joints. The actual leaving of the area, er well maybe not so much. Sure, Kevin was no longer chained up next a particularly disgruntled unwillingly animated garden gnome, but looking out the window at the clouds drifting by the north(?) tower he wasn’t really that much closer to actually succeeding in the whole escaping the dark lord's fortress with vital information on the source of his stolen powers. That this whole weaponless gambit had begun in search of. At least, he thought wryly to himself, they haven’t realized I’m dumb enough to get lost deeper in the castle and are combing through the overgrown gardens outside.

Breaking away from where he’d been watching the undead guardsmen, looking like ants far below, in their misguided search he steeled his resolve.

The rebels needed the information he’d spelled into his mother’s necklace to break the reign of an undying monster that had killed countless people for nothing but trying to live their lives. Loved ones and strangers alike who didn’t deserve their eventual fate. He refused to be the one to lose the only spark of hope they’d managed to keep lit in years of toil. Nodding decisively to himself the young orphan started the long, creeping journey down the narrow, spiraling stairs before him. As he crept mostly in silence he began tracing runes into the air before him, reciting as quietly as he could the words he’d learned at his mother knee before her capture and public execution. Preparing the final spell she’d managed to teach him that, hopefully, would help them end this tireless war. 

All he needed now, sneaking around the final corner towards what he hoped was the atrium, magic thrumming from his soul and staining his fingers, was a foci to direct it through. Looking around he realized that although he hadn’t ended up in the deceptively open and bright atrium he had ended up standing before the vast jungles off the greenhouses.

This, he thought to himself, could be made to work. After all he only needed - a shout rang out behind him! Turning on his heel there! A mere dozen feet behind him was a lone, achingly familiar, guard!

Panicked he took off through the double doors, barely feeling the weight of the heavy wood in his haste, into the shadowed tangle of plants before him, the rotting form that once was his dearest friend stumbling after him. All pretenses of stealth abandoned, he dodged around reaching vines as they tried to grab him. Frantically looking for something, anything, to slow the puppet just long enough to activate the spell burning to be freed from his soul - and there!

With power derived only from pure will and refusal to fail so too close to often missed success he rammed his shoulder into a planter containing an adolescent magpie-trap. Barely dodging it’s glimmering cat sized mouths as they lunged towards his calves he sprinted past forward as it fell into the path of the pursing lich and the other less familiar faced ghouls.

Continuing his mad dash he grabbed a worn cane that must have been forgotten by one of the enslaved druids responsible for maintaining the deadly flora and let the straining magic wash over it. Leaping onto his makeshift broom he took off towards an open ventilation window and the open sky beyond it, he’d done it, they’d be free. 


End file.
